


the war in your head will shoot you down dead

by flysafepapi



Category: Boardwalk Empire, Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26854723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flysafepapi/pseuds/flysafepapi
Summary: He runs.It's probably not a coincidence that he ends up working for another gangster.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 5





	the war in your head will shoot you down dead

He’s never been to another country before, but he knows that, if he stayed, they would have caught him. Murder is another thing he’d never done before, but he can cross that off the list now. It hadn’t made him feel any better, like it thought it might, but he should have expected that. Not a lot does, these days. Getting onto the boat was easy enough, and he only had the one bag with him, filled with everything that he felt was important enough to take when he left. For a while, he feels bad that Julia will be wondering what happened to him, where he’s gone, but the letter he left behind will have to do. He’ll miss her, and he’ll always be grateful for her for looking after him, after Richard- After.

When he’s alone, in the small flat he’d managed to get with the last bit of money he has, he drops his bag on the table and pulls the contents out. It’s not much, mostly clothes, but in the middle and wrapped in an old coat is the three things that he’d kept for himself because he wanted them, not because he needs them. The pictures of his parents go on the mantle, above the crumbling fireplace, where he can see them whenever he wants. One of his father, standing in his army uniform, and one of his mother with him on her hip, grinning at the camera. They’re all he has left of them. The last item, cold against his fingers, gets it own special place between the two pictures, and he runs his fingers along the cold tin before he puts it down gently. It’s disconcerting, to see the face staring back at him, but comforting too, in a way. There they are, all three of the people that shaped his life, looking over him. 

He spends the first night alone, hungry, but free.

**

“What are you doing here, kid?”

He flinches, though he doesn’t mean to. Get yourself together, he thinks, you’ve killed a man. This is nothing.

“Uh, sorry, I just- I was told that there was work here, if someone was brave enough to do it?”

The man who’d escorted him in makes a noise in the back of his throat, almost like a laugh, but he doesn’t turn around to look at him. He keeps his eyes on the man behind the desk who looks back at him with an appraising stare. 

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“The truth, not what you told the coppers, eh?”

He feels his face heat up, at being caught out, but doesn’t look away.

“Fifteen.” 

“Hm. And why are you here, so far from home? That accent’s American, boy.”

For some reason, he tells the truth. There’s something in his mind that says it’ll work out, somehow, and he listens. 

“I killed the man that killed my father, and then I ran.” 

It’d been different, he thinks. So easy, to pull the trigger, and watch the life drain from the man that took his fathers from him, even if one had only been indirectly. Too easy. Some nights, he wakes up with the phantom feeling of the gun in his hands, cold metal and a surprising weight, and hears the echoes of gunshots inside his head. 

“Tricky little thing, aren’t you? What’s your name, boy?”

“What’s yours?”

It slips out before he can stop it, but he doesn’t take it back. The man before him blinks, like he’s shocked, and then grins but there’s nothing joyful about it.

“Alfie Solomons. Didn’t you ask whoever told you there was work here?”

“I need the work more than I needed to know.”

“Right. Well, I told you my name. That mean it’s your turn.”

He starts to say his real name, but hesitates. Giving his real name will make it far to easy to track him, find out who he really is, where he came from, what he did. It feels wrong to give the fake name he’d given before, as well, so he doesn’t use that one either. Instead, he uses the only one that feels right.

“Jimmy Harrow. I’m Jimmy Harrow.”


End file.
